


I'm Tired, You're Lonely

by sansalannistark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But only a little, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Reunion, Smut, double pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 12:22:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15267411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansalannistark/pseuds/sansalannistark
Summary: Jaime loves their daughter, but he hates seeing Sansa move on. Sansa gives them both a second chance, and they make it work: for them and for their daughter.Originally half-posted on tumblr in response to a prompt, now expanded as a full one-shot.





	I'm Tired, You're Lonely

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from anonymous on tumblr: 
> 
> "So I have this au in my head of Jaimsa in which the two were college sweethearts and Sansa falls pregnant. Of course thanks to Tywin Jaime breaks up with Sansa, and although he’s still very much in his daughters life he hates having to watch the now famous actress play the role of the lover with other men."
> 
> The title is from a Liza Anne song.

He swallows his bitterness harshly, his eyes distant even as he watches his infant daughter squeal and roll around on the carpet as she throws her soft toy around. Beneath her innocent giggles he can hear Sansa talking to the man at the door, her cheerful tone and pleasantries bringing him into a miserable state that even his daughter’s sweet laughter cannot banish. Turning his attention back to Lyanna, he forces a smile to his face, holding his arms out for his little girl, who comes toddling straight into his arms. Jaime cuddles her close against his chest, taking a deep breath to calm his quivering, erratic heartbeat as he hears Sansa laugh, the tinkling sound which irritates his body like an insect bite that never quite fades.

Sansa comes over to Lyanna, planting a kiss on her forehead to which the babe gurgles happily and Sansa beams. She does not look at him; not once, only returning to Harrold’s side.

“We’ll be back about ten, Jaime,” she calls chirpily, laughing at something Harry whispers to her. There is a sickening joy in her tone and he takes a deep breath before responding for fear she will hear the hoarse note in his voice.

“Yeah, that’s, um, that’s fine, Sansa,” he tells her with an empty voice. In truth, nothing has been fine since he started coming here. He loves his daughter, he is grateful she has allowed him to be a real father to Lyanna, but the nights like these are tough and tenuous. Sansa is acclaimed and beautiful and desired and every night she leaves with one of these men - for some event or other - threatens to break the fragile peace they’ve established. Jaime has found that since he began to see her again, his fixation on the tabloids has been borderline obsessive; he does not mention or condemn her dalliances (he has no place to, he knows). All the same, he wants to know: who has taken the spot in her heart that he once held? Sansa throws these papers in the trash with a dismissive tut, but Jaime has seen her secret smiles and how she slips away sometimes to make phone calls while he plays with Lyanna. He knows what she looks like in love, because she used act like that about  _ him _ . He remembers a bright, bubbly Sansa, panting after he kissed her until she couldn’t breathe.  _ Those _ memories come in flashes now: tracing patterns on damp skin and wrapping their hands in one another’s hair in the early morning; Sansa laughing in the rain, her hair plastered to her face; him flicking flour at her when she insisted they make lemon cakes one afternoon, and ending up making love on the kitchen floor until their limbs were sore.

Jaime mourns that time. He can hardly even concentrate when he’s playing with Lyanna, so he ends up keeping her awake well past her bedtime. Sansa will berate him for it in the morning, but he is loathe to care. Only when Lyanna has fallen asleep in his arms, her little hands clinging onto his worn t-shirt as she snoozes, does he carry her gently into her room and tuck her softly into the cot, draping her favourite blanket over her small form. Brushing his fingers over his lips, then her cheek, he slips away to lie down on the spare bed Sansa has left for him. A  _ spare  _ bed in a  _ spare  _ room, for a decidedly  _ spare  _ man that she does not need anymore, Jaime reflects dully as he attempts to settle down.

Tonight though, he cannot find solace in his dreams. His mind is awash with Sansa and his memories make his body ache deeply for her. He longs to mouth kisses down her neck and cup her waist with his hands and haul her into his arms and love her like he’s been long to, but such thoughts are fossilised slivers of a past left behind. He has no reason to long for her, when it was his family that broke them and his lack of bravery to stand up to his father that kept them apart.

Jaime tosses and turns, more restless than his infant daughter. Sleep evading him, he slumps down moodily onto a kitchen stool, pouring himself a glass of water and running a hand roughly over his face with a deep exhale. Missing her is a maddening form of grief and he is sure that letting her go has killed the best part of him.

Jaime does not hear the door close, nor her soft footsteps, until her voice rings out across the room like a windchime: “Penny for your thoughts?”

He stutters, jumping at the unexpected intrusion. The glass he is holding slips unbidden from his hand and smashes instantly, sloshing water across the wooden floor. Jaime whirls around as he drops the glass, meeting her wide blue eyes. Sansa’s gaze shifts from the wet floor to his face and back again and in her confusion Jaime is certain that he has never felt more pathetic or more stupid.

“Jaime, are you okay?” she asks, with the gentlest voice and the most unbearably kind eyes. Suddenly, he cannot bear her scrutiny.  _ Pathetic, you’re pathetic, _ his mind jeers, and he manages only to apologise, narrowly shying away from the crack in his voice. Jaime slips past her, cringing when his hip bushes hers. He feels her eyes resting on him as he pulls his shoes on and yanks his jacket roughly over his shoulders, trying in vain to ignore his stinging eyes because he just wants to leave and his body is being ripped in two every moment he stays and he cannot stand it for another second-

“Jaime!”

He ignores her. With shaking hands, he fumbles for the door handle, but it’s locked, of course it is. Sansa never forgets to lock it, she’s always so careful because of Lyanna, and then the thought of his little angel makes his hands shake and he feels a lonesome tear slide down his cheek. Sansa’s continued pleading does not help.

“Jaime, what are you doing? Where are you going?”

In her tone there is a wavering, a shake in her voice - enough to stall him into stillness. Jaime lets out an aberrant, pitiful sob, then quite before he realises what is happening, Sansa has her arms around him and he sees flashes of red hair in his blurred vision. Jaime knows he is dreaming. He  _ must _ be, surely? Nevertheless, her voice in his ear soothes his trembling body and he buries himself in her form. It’s likely the closest she’ll ever let him again, but still far more than he has ever deserved.

“I still love you,” he gasps, before she can throw him out the door. His body is shuddering as he tries in vain to tamper down his emotions. Sansa, to his utter disbelief, only holds him tighter, her fingers curling reassuringly over his. Her hair falls over his shoulder as she buries herself against him, her buzzing warmth against his back and her face planted firmly in the juncture between his neck and shoulder.

Jaime almost misses her words, hushed, quiet and breathless: “I know.” Sansa rubs a thumb over his wrist. “I forgave you a while ago, I know you never wanted to leave, you didn’t know about Lyanna, I  _ know,  _ Jaime, and I cannot stop loving you, however I might have tried to convince myself I can, and I don’t want you to go. Please _. _ ” The words come tumbling from her mouth, like the harried prayer of someone wishing for the return of an absent loved one. “Please, Jaime.” Perhaps she has missed him, like he has missed her. He just never expected it. “Don’t go.”

He feels her pain deep down in the hollow of his bones and it compels him to disregard sanity, or what he should do, for what he wants to do, and has wanted to do for some time. Jaime pushes her arms off his body and grasps her arms to pick her up. His fingertips brush her skin through the fabric of her jacket as she throws herself against him, wrapping her legs around his waist, tugging a whimper from her lips and a groan from his when she unconsciously brushes against his growing erection. Jaime slides his hands under her thighs, squeezing her arse as he holds her up which only makes her drop her head to his neck, biting at the skin there.

_ “Fuck, Sansa _ ,” he hisses. She moves with him, yelping only when he stumbles, slamming them both back against the wall. They’re both panting, breaths mingling in the humidity of the room. The dim light from the kitchen glows resplendent against the hollow of her throat and one half of her face, where he brings his hand to rest. Her damp skin appears to glow and he is utterly breathtaken with her, unable to do anything but rest his forehead against hers, blond locks mixing among russet waves, until she bucks her hips and brings him into a reality that is wholly different from the depths of her beguiling blue eyes, but just as astounding. With Sansa’s fingers at his belt buckle, Jaime runs a hand along her thigh, scrunching the flimsy material of her dress high up her legs until it is bunched satisfactorily around her waist, so that his wandering fingers can stroke her slit through the soaked material of her purple panties. Sansa’s eyes have fluttered shut and her hands fall limply to her side as he pushes the purple cloth aside to stroke her dripping core for a moment, intending fully to bring her to her release. He is stopped by her hand covering his and he looks at her in confusion. Has he miscalculated? He cannot bear to have her reject him while they are so close; she is saving him, pulling him up from dangling on the edge of a crumbling cliff and if she refuses him he will surely fall.

“Sansa…” he croaks out, willing his body not to betray him with more treacherous tears.

 

* * *

  
  


Sansa gasps at the crestfallen expression on his face, throwing a hand out to reassure him, to brush away the pain she sees embossed around his eyes. “No, Jaime, no, I don’t want you to stop. I don’t ever want you to stop, I want…” She breaks off with an indignant huff, clenching one fist as she struggles to articulate. She has to make him understand, but the words she seeks are slippery in her head and instead of speaking, she resorts to the motions of her own body, which knows how to want him, even if her head does yet not.

Sansa leverages herself by shifting, grinding against his cock, wrapping her arms around his neck, breathlessly panting the only word she knows. “Jaime. Oh, Jaime, Jaime,  _ Jaime _ .”

“We’ve been apart so long, and yet your skin feels more familiar than my own,” Jaime muses, allowing his eyes to wrap around every inch of her figure. “If I had a camera in my hand, I would capture you now: panting, your breasts heaving,” he brushes a fingertip over her nipple, obscured by her dress, hears her breath stutter and shift, “the light glittering against your skin. You’re so, so beautiful, my love.”

“You always did have a talent for flattery.”

“And you for making me lose my goddamn mind,” he replies. Sansa’s hands squeeze his shoulders as he surges into her, filling her completely in one swift motion that seizes the air from her lungs and makes her heart clench with the redamancy of their coupling, the reunion of his devotion and her passion that makes her feel lighter than her heavy heart could ever manage all these years without him.

Sansa hisses his name again on an exhale, fingers clawing at his skin, seeking purchase against their frantic movements. She cannot feel anything other than the pleasure of their coupling, which brings her to the sweetest highs when she rocks her hips against him in time with his own movements. With this pleasure, however, comes a sadness, dragged from the muddy depths of her heart, and she is gasping through the tears which pool in her eyes as she gives him the apology she has longed to say.

“I’m sorry, I am so sorry for hurting you - I should never have pushed you away for so long and it was cruel and I- Jaime-” and she buries her head in his shoulder even as he buries himself in her, unable to face him with such shame settling in the pit of her stomach, but then he begins whispering to her so reverently and her guilt is abated.

“Sansa,” she hears, “Sansa, look at me,” and she does, and in his face she sees the same pain she is feeling. His motions grow erratic as he blinks his tears away. In an effort to chase down her release, Sansa shifts closer to him, her head falling forward so that they slot together like jigsaw pieces, her cheek pressed to his, sticky with her tears. With the change in position, Jaime slips deeper inside her - he comes not a moment later, hard, with a low moan and his hand squeezing her skin hard enough to leave blue bruises on the pale flesh. Quivering in wake, Sansa rocks, once, twice, against him, reaching desperately for her own pleasure. A strangled moan tumbles from her mouth as she peaks and her body trembles with the force of their joining. There is silence between them for some minutes as their heart rates ebb and slow to something sane and controlled. Tears remain in both their eyes, and though neither of them say a word, Sansa holds her arms out to gather him close, letting Jamie’s head rest against her chest, his lips close to her hammering heart and she feels a serenity within her that she had thought lost from the moment he left her.

“Thank you,” she utters, as Jaime moves so that they’re both laid on the sofa, his eyes raking over her body. He looks up at her.

“For what?”

“For this gift.” At Jaime’s confusion she cups his cheek gently. “You left me once and it hurt more than I ever thought possible, then I let you back in and I was so scared of loving you again that I hurt both of us.” Sansa drifts her hand over his face, bringing her lips against his.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he tells her. “Not now, not after this.” His hand is splayed on her lower back and he draws her close to nip her bottom lip. His clever fingers are tracing up her stomach, drifting beneath her dress to brush against the underside of her breast when a small voice rings out.

“Mummy?”

Sansa lets out a small groan, batting Jaime’s hand away from her and scrambling up, tugging her dress over her thighs. “Yes, sweetheart?” Lyanna narrows her eyes but runs over to her mother, jumping into her arms.

“What are you doing with daddy?” Behind her she hears Jaime suppress a fit of laughter and she doesn’t need to turn to know there is a wicked smirk on his face; a smirk she has missed, that makes her  _ pine _ .

“Daddy and I were just spending some time alone, Lya,” she explains as best she can, though there are red mark on her thighs where Jaime gripped her, and her cheeks are flushed and red. Her daughter has always been inquisitive and she can see that Lyanna wants to ask more, but she strokes her daughter’s hair and her baby quiets, cuddling her mother. Sansa wraps an arm round her little body, carrying her over to where Jaime is leaning against the arm of the sofa. Sansa could swear his eyes are shining as she sinks down next to him. His arms reach out to take Lyanna from her, and though that damned smirk remains on his lips, there is a definite tenderness in his features.

“My girls,” he whispers into the darkness of the room. Lyanna snuggles in close to the both of them, burrowing her head against her father’s chest as she squeezes her mother’s hand. Sansa holds on tight: to her daughter's small palm, to Jaime’s wrist, as the three of them curl up together.  _ I’ll never let go of either of them _ , she thinks as Lyanna tumbles into sleep and Jaime rubs his thumb over her wrist soothingly. This is a second chance for all three of them and it will not fail. She does not intend to let it.


End file.
